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A Small Window Into Apple, Courtesy of Tim Cook

Timothy D. Cook, Apple's chief, holding the microphone, was in Beijing earlier this month for the release of iPhones through China Mobile, China's largest mobile carrier.Credit Alexander F. Yuan/Associated Press

Apple sold more iPhones and iPads over the last quarter than any other quarter. Yet Apple’s profit was flat compared with last year, and iPhone sales were down in North America, raising questions among investors about how much room Apple has to grow.

After the company’s financial earnings call, Timothy D. Cook, the company’s chief executive, answered questions from analysts about a variety of topics related to the company, including mobile payments and the seemingly disappointing performance of the iPhone 5C. Here are some of the highlights from the session.

On Apple’s small dip in iPhone sales in North America, Mr. Cook said he thought this would be a temporary setback:

In North America, we did not do as well, and this weighed our results; our North American business contracted somewhat, year-over-year. One was that, as we entered the quarter and forecasted our iPhone sales, we actually sold more iPhone 5S’s than we projected. So the mix was stronger to the 5S, and it took us some time to build the mix that customers were demanding. As a result, we lost some units for part of the quarter in North America. And relative to the world, it took us the bulk of the quarter, almost all of the quarter, to get the iPhone 5S into proper supply.

The other thing that happened in North America specifically was that some carriers changed their upgrade policies. And this affected last quarter and will have some effect on the current quarter. This restricted customers who were used to upgrading earlier than the 24 months that they were allowed, and sort of stretched the time out to be a hard and fast 24 months. And so that’s a major factor playing into the North American results.

I think part of what’s happening in North America is a short term effect because of these upgrade policy changes. This affects the period of time, three to six months, I would think, and then it washes through.

On the potential for Apple to explore mobile payments, Mr. Cook sounded enthusiastic:

In general, we’re seeing that people love being able to buy content, whether it’s music or movies or books, from their iPhone, using Touch ID. It’s incredibly simple and easy and elegant, and it’s clear that there’s a lot of opportunity there.

The mobile payments area in general is one that we’ve been intrigued with, and that was one of the thoughts behind Touch ID. But we’re not limiting ourselves just to that. So I don’t have anything specific to announce today, but you can tell by looking at the demographics of our customers and the amount of commerce that goes through iOS devices versus the competition that it’s a big opportunity on the platform.

Mr. Cook has big hopes for China Mobile, the largest phone carrier in the world that just started selling iPhones:

We’ve been selling with China Mobile now for about a week, and last week was the best week for activations we’ve ever had in China. So it’s been an incredible start, and at this moment, we’re just selling in 16 cities with China Mobile, and as Peter alluded to, this number is projected to be over 300 cities by the end of this year. And so we’ve got quite the ramp in front of us, and we’re incredibly excited.

Mr. Cook said Apple’s iPhones and iPads were dominant among businesses and professional customers. That is bad news for Samsung Electronics, which has been pushing hard to get its Galaxy tablets and phones more widely used by professionals:

It’s clear that the enterprise area has huge potential, and we’re doing well from a percentage of companies that are using iPhone and iPad. It’s up to unbelievable numbers. The iPhone is used in 97 percent of the Fortune 500, and 91 percent of the Global 500, and iPad is used in 98 percent of the Fortune 500 and 93 percent of the Global 500. And we have a number of accounts, some of which Peter reviewed in the opening remarks, that have tens of thousands of iOS devices working.

And also, as I think was mentioned earlier, 90 percent of tablet activations in corporations are iPads. And 95 percent of total app activations were on iOS. And I think that’s an incredible measure of ultimately how sticky the products are, because you can get so much productivity out of an iPad and an iPhone.

Mr. Cook was transparent about the iPod’s imminent decline, which didn’t help Apple’s bottom line. Apple’s iPod sales were down 52 percent compared with the same quarter last year:

I think all of us have known for some time that iPod is a declining business.

Mr. Cook admitted that the “mix” of demand for the iPhone 5S versus the cheaper iPhone 5C was different than the company expected:

I think last quarter we did a tremendous job, particularly given the mix was something very different than we thought. It was the first time we’d ever run that particular play before, and demand percentage turned out to be different than we thought. We obviously always look at our results, and conclude what to change moving forward. And if we decide it’s in our best interest to make a change, then we’ll make one. Obviously I’m not going to predict price changes on the earnings call.

Correction: January 28, 2014An earlier version of a photo caption associated with this blog post stated incorrectly where Timothy D. Cook, Apple's chief executive, was to commemorate the release of iPhones through China Mobile. Mr. Cook was in Beijing, not Shanghai.